Transit shelters are a common sight in urban environments. Such shelters generally comprise partially enclosed structures designed to protect persons from heat, cold or rain while they are waiting for buses, subways or taxis. Since persons waiting in transit shelters constitute an at least temporarily captive audience, advertisement displays of various types are often placed in these shelters.
It is generally desirable to provide a source of illumination in transit shelters for purposes of increasing visibility and security during hours of darkness and for illuminating advertising displays, transit schedules or other visual information therein. While transit shelters are usually disposed in urban areas where electrical power from street light systems and the like is readily available, providing illumination to transit shelters generally entails an unjustifiable expense. This is for the reason that electrical power to street lighting systems or overhead power lines is typically supplied at a very high voltage. Accordingly, delivery of power to the shelter necessitates providing a step-down transformer as well as providing shielding and security for the transformer. The expense in both hardware and labor for bringing power to a transit shelter generally amounts to between $4,000 and $7,000 per shelter.
Illumination systems in transit shelters need not be very high in wattage, nor do they need to run 24 hours a day. Solar photovoltaic energy is an ideal source of illumination for transit shelters and such systems have been known in the prior art. In typical prior art systems, such as those sold by Photocomm, Inc. of Rancho, Calif., illumination of a bus shelter is provided by a roof-mounted solar panel connected to an interiorly disposed battery-light bulb combination. While prior art systems do provide for illumination of the shelter at night and can incidentally illuminate advertising and other display material therein in a secondary manner, they have found to be inadequate insofar as the exposed components of the lighting system are prone to theft and/or vandalism and the illumination level of the advertising displays is generally quite low and hence not visible at a distance.
There is a need for a solar photovoltaically illuminated transit shelter which provides a high degree of security for the illumination system and which also provides a high level of visibility for display material illuminated therein. These two criteria satisfy needs of both municipal governments which purchase the shelters and advertisers who rent space therein.
The present invention provides for an improved photovoltaically illuminated shelter having a totally enclosed, self-contained illumination system which is not prone to vandalism. Furthermore, the illumination system of the present invention provides a large-area, highly visible, backlit display which illuminates the interior of the shelter. These and other advantages of the present invention will be readily apparent from the drawings, discussion and description which follow.